The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems eBook

“My Father’s Spirit,
look down, look down—­
From your hunting grounds
in the shining skies;
Behold, for the light
of my heart is gone;
The light is gone and
Winona dies.

I looked to the East,
but I saw no star;
The face of my White
Chief was turned away.
I harked for his footsteps
in vain; afar
His bark sailed over
the Sunrise-sea.

Long have I watched
till my heart is cold;
In my breast it is heavy
and cold as a stone.
No more shall Winona
his face behold,
And the robin that sang
in her heart is gone.

Shall I sit at the feet
of the treacherous brave?
On his hateful couch
shall Winona lie?
Shall she kindle his
fire like a coward slave?
No!—­a warrior’s
daughter can bravely die.

My Father’s Spirit,
look down, look down—­
From your hunting-grounds
in the shining skies;
Behold, for the light
in my heart is gone;
The light is gone and
Winona dies.”

[Illustration: DOWN WHIRLING AND FLUTTERING SHE
FELL, AND HEADLONG PLUNGED INTO THE WATERS.]

Swift the strong hunters climbed as she sang,
and
the foremost of all was Tamdoka;
From crag to crag upward he sprang;
like
a panther he leaped to the summit.
Too late!—­on the brave as he crept
turned
the maid in her scorn and defiance;
Then swift from the dizzy height leaped.
Like
a brant arrow-pierced in mid-heaven.
Down whirling and fluttering she fell,
and
headlong plunged into the waters.
Forever she sank mid the wail,
and
the wild lamentation of women.
Her lone spirit evermore dwells
in
the depths of the Lake of the Mountains,
And the lofty cliff evermore tells
to
the years as they pass her sad story.[BW]

In the silence of sorrow the night
o’er
the earth spread her wide, sable pinions;
And the stars[18] hid their faces; and light
on
the lake fell the tears of the spirits.
As her sad sisters watched on the shore
for
her spirit to rise from the waters,
They heard the swift dip of an oar,
and
a boat they beheld like a shadow,
Gliding down through the night in the gray,
gloaming
mists on the face of the waters.
’Twas the bark of DuLuth on his way
from
the Falls to the Games at Keoza.

[BW] The Dakotas say that the spirit of Winona forever
haunts the lake. They say that it was many, many
winters ago when Winona leaped from the rock,—­that
the rock was then perpendicular to the water’s
edge and she leaped into the lake, but now the rock
has partly crumbled down and the waters have also
receded, so that they do not now reach, the foot of
the perpendicular rock as of old.